5 Easy Ways to Monitor Google Algorithm Changes

Keeping track of Google algorithm updates is a time consuming job and one that you should try to make as straightforwards as possible – there are much more effective ways to spend your time than monitoring whether Google had made a big change. Having said that it’s still important that you understand when a change has happened so you can do the analysis at the time rather than just seeing the impact in your month end reporting and then trying to figure out when the change happened.

Some people say that ranking data is becoming less important and Raven Tools are no longer going to show the data in their system. The problem is that without ranking data it’s very hard to diagnose technical site issues, spot algorithm changes and perform an effective SEO campaign. Google has removed lots of keyword data via “not provided” and the recent update of Chrome while Apple has removed more with iOS6 so in 2013 we are anticipating that good ranking data will be more important than ever in a large scale SEO campaign.

Searchmetrics

Searchmetrics Essentials is a cost effective (although not free) method of tracking the overall visibility of any domain on a weekly basis. The data updates on Wednesday night or Thursday morning usually and gives a great insight into the winners and losers any particular week. We call Thursday “Searchmetrics Day” and it’s the first thing we look at in the morning.

Mozcast

Mozcast has some great data but personally I find the weather references a bit confusing. Being from the UK I tend to think that sunny weather will be hot but they report it as being colder. Basically the hotter and stormier it is, the more the rankings have changed that day.

Serps.com

Serps.com is a more straightforward way of looking at this and calls it volatility – the higher the volatility the more rankings have changed. Add this one to your bookmarks and you have an easy way of checking whether something has occurred.

Serpmetrics.com

Serpmetrics.com talks about flux and has data across three engines on the same chart. Useful to see updates in Yahoo & Bing that you might not otherwise have seen.

Your own ranking data

We always suggest tracking at least 100 keywords on a regular basis and the list should include keywords you are actively optimising for and a set that you are not working on just for control purposes. If you track these daily using something like Advanced Web Ranking (who just turned 10 years old this month) then you will have a really good understanding of exactly which day your rankings changed. By knowing which day things changed it makes it a lot easier to diagnose the algorithm tweak that affected your site.

Finally, last but not least, SEroundtable.com where you can find documentation and discussion on pretty much every update Google has made – this is the first place Google sometimes confirms updates with too.

AboutPatrick Altoft

Patrick is the Director of Strategy at Branded3 and has spent the last 11 years working on the SEO strategies of some of the UK's largest brands. Patrick’s SEO knowledge and experience is highly regarded by many, and he’s regularly invited to speak at the world’s biggest search conferences and events.

I know what you mean about Moz’s Weather Reports, but remember it mainly as a Storm warning system. A Sunny day is calm. It all comes from the SE’s own ‘storm warnings’ of updates, Google in particular, dating back to the fact early updates were named like Hurricanes – e.g. Florida, Jagger, Etc.